Vanderpump Rules Season-Finale Recap: Along for the Bride

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There is nothing more boring than other people’s weddings. Sure, we know all of these people from the teevee, but it’s not like I know them IRLz. I look around and see Katie’s hot brother Rocky and Tom’s triplet brothers and I’m like, I don’t know any of you or why I should care about you. I want to be like Scheana Shay’s husband, Shay Shay, standing somewhere on the edge of the dance floor with my shirt untucked and the sweaty effort of not having a drink or popping a painkiller drenching my brow. I don’t want to be involved in this. I don’t even want to watch it.

I got a little bit choked-up during the last episode, when I saw Katie and Tom finally at the altar in the middle of the woods, but once they get there, it is a bit of a snooze. The only thing amusing about their vows, which Tom has to read off a piece of paper because he can’t be tasked with remembering his emotions, is when Tom Sandoval cries so hard he has to wipe his face on Butter, the couple’s dog that he is holding.

The toasts at the wedding are also a bit disappointing, especially Tom Sandoval’s “said nobody ever” bullshit about how much he loves Tom and Katie. I did appreciate that we got speeches from two out of three Schwartz triplets, which is when I noticed an easy way to tell them apart: Billy is the one with the beard who gave two speeches, Brandon is the one with the bad goatee, and Burt is the one who is clean-shaven. Do you think they did this on purpose? Do you think that they have a separate gig as facial hair models for some sort of poster where it’s like the same face in all of these different configurations?

Anyway, most of this wedding is totally blah. Like when your new boss basically forces you go to his wedding and you don’t even know the person he is marrying or their family or his family for that matter and you sit by yourself ordering free drinks and waiting for the cake to be cut so that you can go home.

There are some great moments, however, like when we are introduced to a Danish wedding tradition: When a groom leaves his bride alone, any other man can kiss her. This lead to a Katie Kissing Bukkake as everyone lines up to smother her cheeks in bacteria, Scotch breath, and cream sauce from the fish. Speaking of fish, I love that Lisa forces Stassi to deliver her dinner like she’s a waitress again. She doesn’t even tell Stassi to do it. She makes Peter tell Stassi, just like they are all working at SUR. And Stassi delivers it because, even if she doesn’t work at the restaurant anymore, she is Lisa’s employee once and forever. That is the strange nature of her fame: No matter how high her star goes, she is basically Lisa’s bitch until Lisa says she isn’t anymore.

Lisa is certainly trying to rope Toms Sandoval and Schwartz even further into her web. She offered to make Tom Sandoval a partner in her newest establishment because he’s been such a good and dutiful bartender for all of these years. She also wants to bring Schwartz along as the “face” of the establishment, which she is going to call Tom Tom. I’m basically moving to Los Angeles so that I can make this my home.

Of course, Schwartz is drunk at his wedding and reflexively says no to the offer. I think that Tom Schwartz has no idea what success looks like and doesn’t realize when someone basically offers him a really great gig for doing absolutely nothing. (Well, maybe not entirely. He is on this show, which is a great gig where he gets to do nothing.) If I were Katie, I would be pissed. Here she is, slinging Pumptinis for the better part of a decade and Lisa gives her husband a stake in a bar because he’s pretty. Please.

Lisa made mention of this plan a few episodes ago, but I didn’t think much of it, that it was just a ploy for the show. I think even less of it now. You know in an action movie where Iron Man or Batman or whatever man has vanquished his foe and he walks off into the hazy 3-D sunset, but from the rubble you see the villain’s hand pop out and clutch into a fist? That is basically what Lisa is doing by giving these two a bar. It’s the setup for a sequel. She’s just doling out story lines for next season before Vanderpump Rules has even been renewed.

Lisa is also like the Judd Apatow movie of this show, making sure that every couple will get married and have children because the only real happiness at the end of the third reel has to be the heterosexist ideal of a monogamous relationship. It’s odd because the draw of this show as about messy 20-somethings getting wasted and hooking up and having all of these different relationships. Now, five years later, they’re all coupled up and stable — or relatively stable, at least for practitioners of the reality television arts and sciences.

It is nice that every couple gets their moment. Jax pretends like he is going to break up with Brittany in a cruel joke that doesn’t really play that well and reminds everyone why they just really hate Jax. Then he tells her that they’re going to get married, but he’s not asking her yet. He might as well just ask her, right? That’s like telling someone that there is ice cream in the freezer, but they have to wait for permission to eat it.

Just like Jax, Tom Sandoval sits down Ariana and kind of proposes to her without proposing to her. She is like, “Uh, thanks, I guess.” I would have proposed to Ariana, too, because she is the best thing to happen to tuxedos since Ryan Gosling’s abs and Jon Hamm’s package. I have never seen anyone look so hot in a suit. Damn, if I were a girl, I would want to be Ariana. She even tells Jax that she needs extra “dick room” in her tuxedo just like him because, well, after all of those years of “supplements,” I’m sure that Jax’s manhood has shrunk down to the same size as Ariana’s.

It’s Ariana’s supreme awesomeness that wants Stassi to love her so bad. Stassi, much like Dorit on The Real Botox Beasts of Thousand Oaks Dermatological Care Center, is so narcissistic that she can’t imagine a world where anyone doesn’t like her. I don’t think that Stassi even cares if she and Ariana are friends. It’s just that she can’t have someone be “not friends” with her. At least they bond over their mutual desire to murder the other.

Now we have to talk about Scheana Shay and the inevitable dissolution of her marriage. We jump ahead three months, because Bravo knows that we all know that Scheana Shay and Shay Shay are getting divorced so we have to capture some of it for the cameras. Scheana talking to Lisa while they both pretend like the other party has no idea what’s happening is a total sham and a hoax and it made me want to throw Scheana in the swan pond in front of Villa Rosa. As Lisa said, if he doesn’t show up for six days, they have to have a serious conversation about it, especially since he took all the money.

When she finally sits down with Shay, he says that he’s not on drugs (which, come on) and that he only went away to get Scheana’s attention. Yeah, maybe do that for a day and then call and tell her you’re not dead. That’s what someone who wants to stay in a relationship does.

However, they are both completely incapable of having a relationship. Scheana seems far too emotionally immature and Shay is still in the throes of a serious drug addiction, which he hasn’t really seen the other side of. These two need to step away and work on themselves for a bit. Also, maybe Scheana should think about getting a manicure that is not so obviously threatening to everyone who sees her. Still, when Scheana says, “Nothing is supposed to last forever,” and Shay responds, “This is,” my heart broke for both of them. Adding insult to injury, the only thing that’s nearby for Shay to lump his piles of soiled clothes into is one of Scheana’s bright-purple suitcases.

As Shay was walking to his car with all of his belongings, things were looking up across town for Toms Schwartz and Sandoval. They finally got the keys to Tom Tom and walked around the empty shell of the restaulounge, thinking about what they were going to do with the place. It was covered in sawdust and construction equipment was stowed in the corners, as if it didn’t want people to know a transformation was about to occur. “Well,” Tom Sandoval said, “maybe we should pick up some hammers and start banging.”

Schwartz smoothed his hand down his partner’s muscled back and, for just a moment, his wedding ring caught in the folds of the fabric. “I can’t wait to nail with you,” he said. He kissed Sandoval and they stumbled together across the room, their faces connected like they were both a part of the same dream. When they hit a wall, Sandoval lowered Schwartz onto a banquette that wrapped around the wall of the empty joint. It was stripped to its base and Schwartz could feel the rasping of the unfinished wood through his clothing. Reflexively, he bent his legs and raised them up in the air as Sandoval lowered his body onto Schwartz’s. They had finally made it, they had finally realized their dream to be together and make something great other than love, other than this fruitful union. Sandoval sat up and rubbed the growing hammer in Schwartz’s pants. It works just fine, he thought to himself as a smile spread across his face smoothly and completely, like mayonnaise on a piece of rye, and the specks of sawdust tickled both of their noses, daring one of them to sneeze first.